


What Is And Should Never Be

by Saoirse_Laochra



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Isolation, Language, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred, Underage Drinking, body issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5058169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saoirse_Laochra/pseuds/Saoirse_Laochra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We were kids. Stupid, scared, thirteen year old kids when we made a stupid choice that lead through an abandoned construction site.</p>
<p>But by the time it ended, we weren’t kids anymore. Three years later, we were a lot of things… Damaged, suffering, falling apart, losing our minds… But not kids.</p>
<p>Not anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We All Have Emptiness Inside

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place sometime before the last few books. Warnings for: underage drinking, alcoholism, body issues (extreme exercise), language, self-torment, angst, PTSD, and the like. I’ll add more tags as needed if necessary.
> 
> This is unbeta'd, so any errors are my own, and I apologize.
> 
> Hopefully, this should be at least five-seven chapters, although I can't promise regular updates. I've got a busy life. But at least every week, every other week at most, I will try to update.
> 
> Credit to Led Zepplin for the story title, and Avenged Sevenfold for the chapter title.
> 
> Comments and kudos make my day. : D

My name is Marco.

Just Marco. No last name . Or at least, not one I can tell you.

You know, when we first started writing these stupid ‘memoirs’ (as Cassie calls them), we all used to joke about it. About how we could never put our last names, our birthdays, where we lived…

Yeah. Sorry, but these last few months haven’t exactly left me in a joking mood.

So. My name is Marco. And I’m fighting a war. Me, and five other kids –well, three other kids, an alien, and a bird –are fighting to save the world from a bunch of parasitic slugs called Yeerks.

And we’re all getting a little tired.

In the past four years, I’ve seen and done more shit than most people could handle.

Examples? Well… I was eaten by a shark, torn apart by ants, disemboweled by Hork-Bajir a few dozen times, kidnapped by tiny, psycho egomaniacs, nearly killed and stuffed by fish people, almost eaten by Taxxons a few times… oh, and I’ve set my mother up to be killed, just to hit the high light reel.

Twice. Twice now, I’ve actively tried to kill my mom.

Not that she’s really my mom anymore. She’s one of _them_. A controller.  She’s the host body for Visser One, the slug that started this whole mess.

‘But, Marco!’ you say. ‘She’s still your mom! She’s still in there!’

I try not to think about that too much.

Which might be why I drink so much.

 

I’m sure exactly when I started drinking.  Sometime after the second time I tried to kill Visser One, I suppose. The time when I morphed goat, and was going to head butt her off a cliff, ‘cause you know, that’s what a great son I am. Sadly, Hallmark doesn’t make a ‘Sorry I tried to kill you, mom!’ Mother’s Day card.

Whiskey is my preferred alcohol of choice. But it wasn’t like I was real picky; I’d down whatever I could get my hands on. Most of my allowance went towards liquor, and I wasn’t above stealing it if I couldn’t afford it, although I never used a morph to do it.

See? I’m still capable of drawing a line somewhere. Drinking myself into a stupor five nights a week? A-Okay. Morphing to steal said liquor? Never! I wouldn’t do such a thing. That would be wrong. Using my superpowers for evil, and all that. So I stay human when I steal.

But we all have our vices now. Cassie punishes herself with self-torment, Jake works out until he can barely move, Rachael’s an adrenaline junkie, Tobias isolates himself, and Ax…

Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing that weight isn’t stored in DNA. ‘Cause that boy eats anything that isn’t nailed to the floor. And if he’s hungry enough, he might actually try to eat the floor too.

But me? See, I deal with my issues in a normal, healthy, typical-teenage way. I drink. That’s normal, right? Most teenager s drink.

See? I’m perfectly normal.

Nothing wrong here at all.

 

I was laying in my bed, happily buzzed, and working my way towards shit-faced when I heard the knock on my door.

“Marco?”

I shoved the bottle back under my bed, grabbing one of my textbooks and flipping it open to a random page,  as I called back, “Yeah, Dad. C’mon in.”

My dad stepped into my disaster of a room, wrinkling his nose a bit as he looked around.

“You ever gonna clean this pigsty?”

I shrugged. Once, me and my dad had been close. Not anymore. Trying to kill my mom –his wife –makes it kind of hard to have a conversation with the guy.

“Working hard?” He asked, making his way past the dirty clothes, papers, and computer parts to sit on the edge of my bed.

I shrugged again, wishing he’d just leave. I’d spent most of the day getting my insides ripped out by Hork-Bajir controllers, chased by cannibalistic Taxxons, and shot at with Dracon blasters… So I really wasn’t feeling the sharing and caring.

Dad sighed, setting one hand on my foot. “You know you can talk to me, right? About anything,” He said, trying to keep his voice upbeat, but I could see the sadness and desperation on his face.

I guess I could understand. In a weird, abstract way, I could even almost appreciate him trying. We hadn’t had a conversation in months, and doing something together was a distant memory.

But it was hard to have a conversation about which basketball team was better when I was busy trying to save the world, save my mom, or trying to end up not dead –or worse, a Controller.

He was looking at me expectantly though, so I forced something that –I hoped –looked like a smile to my face. “Yeah, dad. I know.”

“Marco, I… I just feel like… Like I’m losing you, son. You just… I mean… It feels like you just drift, you know? You don’t watch TV, or play video games, you don’t talk… You just sit in your room with your headsets on. I know… I know we’ve had a rough go of it since your mom died, but… I just don’t want you to miss out on life while you sit up hear listening to music.”

I stared at him blankly for a minute, before my foggy brain realized he was waiting for some sort of response.

Not sure what I was supposed to respond. He was absolutely right. Somehow, TV and video games just didn’t matter as much when you’re seventeen, and fighting a war.

But I couldn’t tell him that.

“Just… teenage stuff, dad. No big deal. I’m fine.”

“Marco –“

“Jesus, dad, I said I’m fine! Nothing’s wrong!” I snapped, feeling my tenuous grip on my temper slip away. “Why don’t you go bother Nora?!”

I yanked myself off the bed, ignoring the hurt look in his eyes as I stormed out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door.

Once I was out of sight of the housing development I lived in, I morphed osprey.

I gotta admit: while I love the power of my gorilla, the senses of my wolf, the playfulness of my dolphin… Nothing compares to flying. If you can’t fly, then you won’t understand, but… it’s like the most liberating feeling in the world. Nothing above you but open skies, the ground far below… To not be trapped in the normal ‘back, forward, left, right’. To add up, down, and angles to your movement options.

Usually, flying mellows me right out. Makes my problems seem like nothing. But not that night.

I didn’t bother flying to Jake’s house; it was still early enough in the evening that I knew he’d be at the school gym. Unless we had a meeting, that was where he usually was.

I landed about a block away, morphing back to human, before continuing to the school. When I got there, I nodded at the security guard at the front desk, plastering a goofy smile on my face.

“Hey, Marco,” He said absently, not looking at his book.

“Hey, Dwayne.”

“Gonna use the pool?” He asked, only half-interested.

“Nah. Thought I might hit the weight room,” I said lazily, moving past him. “See you later.”

“Later.”

As I trailed down the hallways towards the gym, my mind went back to the normal times I’d had in those halls. I’d stolen my first kiss from a red-headed girl named Kelsie by that locker over there. Gotten into a fight with a guy named Donnie in that classroom. That was the bathroom where I watched as Jake went and saved Tobias from a bunch of assholes who were giving him a swirlie bath. Down that hallway there was where I pulled one of my sweetest pranks, involving a lot of lotion and the frogs from the science wing.

As I drew closer to the weight room –situated across the hall from the gym –I could hear the steady clang of weights being lowered. Rolling my eyes, I pushed open the heavy door, and stepped inside.

Jake wasn’t one of those beefed up, steroid-muscle weight lifters. He was tall –although to me at five foot two, everyone looks tall –and he definitely had some weight to him, but it was more like Keanu Reeves in Speed, less Schwarzenegger or Stallone.

Which was weird, because the boy seriously spent at least eighty percent of his down time working out.

“Yo, Jake.”

He turned to look at me, giving me a weary smile as he set down the weights, and pulled his headphones off, shutting off his Walkman as he stood.

“What’s up, Marco?” He asked, sounding a bit winded. Sweat stuck to his forehead, matting his blond hair down, and his gym shorts were sticking to his legs.

“How long you been here, man?” I asked, sitting down on one of the bench presses.

He shrugged as he wiped his face off with a towel. “Dunno. Few hours, I guess.”

I shrugged back. Who was I to criticize, right?

We sat there staring at each other for about thirty seconds. I remember the days when conversations came easy to us –who was the better superhero, NBA dream teams, who could kick who’s ass in wrestling…

But lately we’d been reduced to this. Staring at each other, scrambling for something to say.

Finally, I cleared my throat, tucking a stray piece of black hair back behind my ear. “Wanna do something tonight?” When he looked at me suspiciously, I shrugged again. “My dad’s been getting on my case. Wanted to get out of the house for a bit.”

He laughed darkly at that. “Yeah, ‘cause we spend so much time relaxing at home, right?”

“No, I’m serious, man. Let’s do something. Hell, we can get the others in on it if you want. Go bowling, or play laser tag… Hit up the arcade, see a movie… Something normal,” I said, trying and failing to keep the desperation out of my voice.

Finally, he sighed. “Yeah. Sure. Why not. Guess we could introduce Ax to bowling,” He said with a chuckle.

 

* * *

 

_**(Jake)** _

Marco went outside to use the payphone to try and call the others while I hit the locker rooms. I quickly shed my work out clothes , shoving them in my gym bag, and then into my locker, before stepping into the shower.

I turned the water up as hot as it could go, and stood there for a few minutes, before shutting the hot water off, and letting it go freezing cold.

My already tired body screamed in protest, but I ignored it for a few more minutes, before reluctantly shutting the water off, and pulling my normal clothes on while I was still wet.

When I got outside, Marco was just hanging up the phone. He turned sharply, fist raised to throw a punch before he saw that it was me.

He dropped his fist with a rueful smile and a shrug.

This war has taken a toll on all of us, but I think it’s Marco who’s changed the most.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. ‘But, Jake!’ You say, ‘Look at Rachael! She’s turned into a warrior!’

True. Rachael is a fighter, and true, I don’t know what she’ll do with herself after this war ends. But Rachael has always been a fighter. Even when we would play together as kids, we would always play cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, Yanks and Rebs.

And she pretty much always ended up stomping the other team. Sometimes literally.

This war just gave her an actual, real enemy to fight.

And yes, Tobias has changed a lot. He’s not the quiet, shy boy I met in the bathrooms, getting his head flushed repeatedly. But he’s still inherently Tobias: a loner. He’s just become a bit more predatory.

But Marco… Man, I remember back before all this shit started, he never took anything seriously. Always laughing about something, and chasing after any girl that moved.

Now though, staring at him, there was no trace of the class clown, and ladies-man-wannabe. Matter of fact, he looked like a thug, like someone you wouldn’t want behind you in a dark alley.

“Cassie and Rachael are in. Rachael’s gonna go to Ax’s and see if him and Bird-Boy wanna tag along,” He said, his voice slurring a bit. “Then they’ll meet us at the bowling alley.”

I sighed, shaking my head as we started walking  towards the mall where the bowling alley was. “You been drinking again?”

He grunted at me, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“So what if I have?” He asked after a minute.

“So what if we have a mission? What if we need to –“

“Jesus, Jake, don’t make me have this conversation with you too. I’m fine, alright? Something comes up, I’ll be good. Have I _ever_ not been ready?”

I shrugged. “No.”

“Then what’s everybody’s beef?”

I grabbed him by the shoulder, spinning him around to face me as we came to a stop, him glaring up at me. So I put on my best ‘leader’ voice, and said, “Because someday, Marco, you won’t be ready. Or you’ll be too slow to pull off the morph. Or passed out in a ditch somewhere.”

He yanked himself out of my grasp, his face dark. “Oh yeah? And what about you, Oh Fearless Leader?” He asked nastily. “What about the day when you pass out from exhaustion? Or you’re too sore to morph? Huh? You live in a glass house, Jake; don’t go throwing stones.”

For a few seconds, we stood there glaring at each other. Honestly, I thought we might just have it out right there in the middle of the street.

But a car backfired. And both of us dropped to the ground, looking around for the threat. When I looked over at Marco, his hands were already almost three times their normal size as he subconsciously morphed into his battle form of gorilla.

I almost said something… Until I noticed the orange and black fur starting to grow out of my legs.


	2. Chapter 2

Marco

I sat in English class, trying to tune the teacher out as much as possible as I rubbed at the back of my neck.

Bowling the previous night hadn’t been a complete disaster. I don’t know that any of us other than Ax really ‘had fun’, but since nobody left early, I figure they all must have been thinking the same thing as me:

It was better than trying to go home, and act normal around our folks. Better than going to sleep, and waking up in a cold sweat from an all-too real nightmare. Even an awkward, tense night of pretending to be something we weren’t, and could never be again was better than the alternative of waking up alone with no one for comfort.

“… me what Ponyboy was thinking? Anyone?”

I groaned as quietly as I could, fighting the urge to slam my head off my desk. Seriously, who gave a shit what some loser kid in some stupid book was thinking?

_‘Oh no, my best friend accidentally killed my rival! The horror! I must run away!’_

Puke. Me and my friends routinely tried killing our enemies –enemies who were a lot more dangerous than some stupid kid with a blade. I guess after you rip a Hork-Bajir’s arms off, stabbing someone just doesn’t do it for you anymore.

“Marco?”

Of course she would call on me. That’s just how things work in my life. If I knew the damn answer, she’d never call on me.

“Marco!”

I flashed her a smile. “Well… I imagine he was thinking something like… ‘Hey, I can totally get with his girlfriend now!’”

Half the class laughed, while the other half groaned. The teacher rolled her eyes, and moved on to someone else.

I glanced over at Jake to see what his response was, but he was sleeping with his eyes open (something most of us did these days), head propped against his fist. To the teacher at the front of the room it probably looked like he was paying attention, but from my angle two seats over, I could see the little bit of drool snaking down his chin.

“Alright everyone, let’s be serious here. This was a very traumatic event for Ponyboy. He’s a young kid –younger than most of you –and he’s watched his best friend stab and kill another boy. He’s on the run, away from his family, who he’s depended on his whole life. He’s going to go his whole life, stuck in that one moment. Thoughts?”

Again, I resisted the urge to bash my head off the polished wood of my desk, although it was harder. A concussion sounded like a pretty nice alternative to listening to this puke-inducing shit. Traumatic? Seriously? Me and the Animorphs routinely turn into critters and rip our enemies apart with our claws and teeth. You want traumatic? Try having bits of Taxxon stuck in your teeth.

And my family? My dad’s remarried because he doesn’t know that my mom is still alive. And instead of being dead, she’s actually a slave to an evil slug parasite that’s the leader of other parasites trying to take over the world.

I turned everything out, and started doodling on a piece of paper.

We were supposed to meet at Cassie’s barn after school; supposed to talk about our next move. Something about a new Sharing facility opening up. Guess the yeerks filled up the last one, needed a bigger building.

Honestly? I really couldn’t find it in me to care too much anymore.

Don’t get me wrong: the yeerks are the enemy. I get that. I get that they need to be stopped. But the never ending battles once a week was getting a little straining. The constant paranoia, wondering who was a controller and who wasn’t was starting to drive me crazy. My English teacher? Hell, she could be a sub-visser. My old friend Paul? He might be Visser Three’s personal assistant. The guy who bags my groceries? The librarian? The cute girl who gives me free slushies at the 7/11? The bag lady begging for change?

That was why we were going to lose the fight. There were five of us, versus lord knows how many of them. And we had no idea who they were.

 

It was a few hours after school when we finally all hooked up in Cassie’s barn. Tobias was in human morph, meaning him and Rachael had probably had another fight.

See, Tobias is a nothlit. Someone who spent more than two hours in morph. Means he got stuck in perma-bird mode. No more human –or morphing at all –for my favorite predator. Then about a year and a half ago, some big shot called the Ellimist –outer space’s version of God –did Tobias a solid after Tobias saved the first free Hork-Bajir. Gave him back his power to morph, and best time so Tobias could ‘acquire’ himself.

Rachael thinks Tobias should just perma-morph human now. Be a human, go to dances with her, kiss her under the stars, yada yada yada. Surprise, dating a hawk’s a little rough… Although I don’t feel too bad, she knew what she was getting into when she started dating Bird-Boy.

But she still fights with him about it, at least once or twice a month. Big blow up, and Tobias tries to appease her by spending more time in human morph.

Sometimes, Rachael just doesn’t think. Firstly, no one Tobias walks away from this war. He could –and we won’t start on should –but he won’t. See, we found out that Elfangor –the Andalite who started this whole mess, who was eaten by Visser Three –was actually Tobias’s dad. Don’t ask, it’s complicated and involves the Time-Lord known as the Ellimist again.

Plus, at this point, we’re all so fucked up, it’s not like we could walk away anyways. Might as well stick with it and do some good.

But Rachael can’t grasp that. Honestly, everybody talks about how smart and brilliant she is, but there are times when she is the stereotypical blonde chick. She sees things in terms of ‘it should be like this’.

Me? I’m a bit more practical about things. Maybe it ‘should’ be, but it ain’t. Yeah, Tobias should be a ‘real boy’. He should be able to take her to the school dance. But he can’t, ‘cause he’s a bird. And we can’t afford to lose even one member of our group right now. We’re all already hanging on by the skin of our teeth… If one of us walked away, we’d all end up hauling ass as far from this shitty city as we could.

Me, personally? I’d go to Antarctica or the Sahara.

Not that I’ve thought about it all. Nope.

But there we were. Not in the Sahara or Antarctica, or the Sahara, but Cassie’s barn. Lounging around on hay bales, and animal cages.

Talking about how we were going to attempt to slow the Yeerk Empire.

Because we’d all given up on stopping it. Originally, we were hoping to just last long enough for the Andalites to arrive and save the day. But lately, we’ve all pretty much quietly agreed that the Andalites aren’t coming. And if they do, we’re not entirely sure we want them to.

See, we found out a few months ago –when Cassie was possessed by the ghost of a dead Andalite/Hork-Bajir nothlit –that when the Andalites realized they couldn’t save the Hork-Bajir, that there were too many controllers already… They dropped a bio bomb. Killed off all the Hork-Bajir on their home planet. Only ones who survived were the ones the yeerks had already taken.

So yeah. We weren’t so sure we liked the Andalite version of ‘saving’.

But we didn’t talk about it much. Because if the Andalites weren’t coming, or were coming to drop a plague on our head… There was no point in what we were doing. Risking our lives again and again in a pointless effort to stop an army.

“So… ideas?” Jake asked, rubbing his eyes.

I snorted as Rachael opened her mouth. “Head on attack! Charge in! Go elephant and stomp the building!” I said in as girly a tone as I could, speaking before she could. She glared, and threw a chunk of dirt at me, but I noticed she didn’t say anything. “Listen guys, why are we doing this? Even if we come up with a great plan, what’s the point? We attack them, maybe even destroy the building; they rebuild in a few weeks. We hurt some Controllers; they heal up and back in the saddle after a few weeks. We can’t keep risking our lives on missions that don’t accomplish anything.”

“So what? You wanna sit this one out?” Rachael demanded angrily, clearly still upset about me mocking her. “That’s –“

Tobias glanced her way, and she tilted her head towards him. Clearly he was talking to her in talk speak –which he could do because human was a morph for him now –and she was listening. Growing irritated –although I wasn’t sure why –I cleared my throat.

“If you got something to say, you can say it to the group,” I said roughly. “And no, I didn’t say that. I’m saying we gotta plan this stuff out better. If we’re gonna take out the building, we need to do more than destroy the actual building. Destroy the foundation; make it so they can’t rebuild there. Maybe instead of brute force, we make it look like a gas leak; environmental hazard. Make the Sharing look bad, and have to build somewhere else. We keep going in swinging, and we’re gonna end up dead. We gotta start planning better; think smarter, not work harder.”


End file.
